I worked for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles from 1993 to 1998. It was a great experience, one of the best opportunities of my life. I was young, with no fear and ready for anything. My first assignment was managing high school summer maintenance projects. It was the perfect introduction to managing construction. We hired a core group of contractors, and most were affiliated with the catholic church as members. Then in January 1994 the Big One as they say, the Northridge Earthquake hit. I and a bunch of us young managers were thrown into the fire immediately. We worked intensely on earthquake rebuilding projects for two years. An unfortunate event but a fantastic experience for young managers thrown into the deep end and had to learn to survive.

I moved to New York in 1998. I had a cousin in NY who needed help with a concrete/masonry business. This was a great experience learning how things were done in New York, which obviously was different from Los Angeles. My cousin was a great salesman, and I learned a lot from him how to keep moving forward and creating opportunities for new projects.

I moved back to Los Angeles in 1999. My goal was to start a business. I studied for the General Contractor License for California and passed that in late 1999. Getting started though was hard and difficult to get clients at first. I did a bit of everything, house extensions, kitchen remodels, lots of bathroom remodels and the latter part got work with archdiocesan parishes with various improvement projects. We stayed in Los Angeles until 2006.

In mid-2006 we moved back to New Jersey to be close to family and traveling home to Ireland. I worked for two GCs from 2007 to 2010. The first GC was based out of Long Island, New York. They did mostly prevailing wage, city projects. It was a good experience, but it wasn’t what I really enjoyed. The bureaucracy was just too much for me.

Then in 2008 I got a call from a headhunter asking if I was interested in working for a GC in New Jersey. I interviewed and all went well. That was a great experience working for them and I learned a great deal from this company. They had a great organization structure that suited me, and I liked how they managed from top to bottom.

Then in 2010 a fellow worker who moved from the NJ job to work in Manhattan called me one day, asking if I’d be interested in a  Project Superintendent position in NYC. I had two interviews with Kajima and was hired in late 2010. Working for Kajima has and is a wonderful experience. I am going on Fifteen years in Oct’25 which has awarded me with many great experiences. My first years with KBD were all in NYC managing construction in the middle of Manhattan. Great experience to learn how to manage construction in a busy city like NYC. In 2014 I went on the road and first project was Bridgestone in SC, six months later I went to Yokohama Tires in Mississippi. I came back to New Jersey in 2015 to do a fit out in NYC and after that a new warehouse opportunity came up in central NJ which I was involved in from preconstruction to completion. In 2018 I moved with my family to Florida. This meant going on the road full time, which I’ve done since 2018.